Today I return to 'Very Grateful'. I am wearing the light pink Carpe Diem t-shirt that my nieces had made for the family for Mom's memorial service. My morning coffee is in my "Book Woman" mug. I will be writing in the front room where I keep all of Mom's papers. I have faith that I will know what to say. In fact, during this week of waiting and listening to how God wants me to proceed, I have heard that this is a book about faith, and specifically about Mom’s faith that inspired mine.
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“There is nearly always something deep in our hearts about which some special word has been told us by our Lord, or about which we have some inward assurance that we know it is from Him.” So writes Amy Carmichael, a missionary in India from 1895-1951. I appreciate Amy’s language, language of another century. “Our Lord” isn’t a term I hear very much in my UCC church. In fact, I don’t hear it at all. But no matter, I get the point. What is it that God is placing in my heart? What word do I hear? Honing it down to only one word helps me clarify what inward assurance God is giving me. Today it is patience. The final draft of “Very Grateful”, the memoir I’m writing about my mom is almost completed. I am impatient with the little details that I have to attend to before I send it to my editor tomorrow. I pray for patience, trusting that the work will be done, and accepting that this isn’t the last time that God will have to send me that special word. My mom would have been 104 today, but it was time when she faded away at age 101. I’ve written this before but it’s worth hearing again, at least for me. Nine days before she died I wrote on a piece of paper, “God has been good to you your whole life.” She read it carefully, needing time to process, and then said, “It’s true…, very grateful.” Those were the last words she spoke. The core of Mom’s faith was gratitude. Maybe it be so for all of us. Today was a day of gratitude. For my health, my family and friends; for my life situation that makes all of this possible. It’s all grace. I pray that I will use it well. I’m also very grateful that while in Florence I was able to work on my memoir about my mom. I now have a draft that is ready for fine-tuning. Not surprising that the title is, “Very Grateful.” I’ll be posting this tomorrow just before I start my travels home. When I heard that the owner of the cottage needed to come home a week early, I could have been annoyed, or even worse, angry, resentful… you name it. Yes, I could have been, because I have often have those feelings. But, thanks to God’s grace, I was free this time of all that kind of angst. Instead I watched my final sunrise in gratitude. Gratitude for the time I had there, for the home I will return to, for my health… the list went on and on. Finally I was grateful that I was grateful. I could have forgotten about gratitude altogether; I do that sometimes. Gratitude is something we need to practice all the time, for the little things and for the big things. Most of the Epistles start and end with gratitude. The psalmists always included a line or two of gratitude. Gratitude was the core of my mom’s faith. Maybe writing about her is another one of God’s ways of reminded me. As I go back through my journals and blog entries to write my memoir, I’m rather surprised at how foundational my mom’s faith is to me. I’m realizing that I emulate many of her spiritual practices, although for sure I don’t come close to her humility. I’m not trying to copy her; that would be the last thing she’d ever want, which is a perfect example of her humility. But I do find myself following some of her ways of living out her faith: going to church, visiting people, daily Bible reading and prayer, reading out loud the copy of “A Diary of Private Prayer” that she gave me, praying for people, and questioning when I judge. Occasionally Mom and I talked about our faith, but it is what I observed, more than what she said, that grows deep in me. She would never have consider blogging about her faith or about anything personal; she was too private for that, and besides, she exuded an remarkable certainty about her faith. She didn’t question or ponder the way I do; in that way we were very different. Like Mom, out in my world, I don’t wear my faith on my sleeve. I talk with a few friends about it, I attend church regularly, I visit, I agree to pray for people, I blog. This feels right, at least for now. “Thanks, Mom; I’m very grateful.” One of the benefits in getting up at 5:30, is that regardless of all the holiday activities, my solitary morning prayer time is never compromised. Very few people get up that early, and if they do, they are into their own meditation ritual. Activities or parties start after a big late morning breakfast, so no interruption there. This season my prayer time has been more heartrending, more necessary, and more powerful than ever. As my faith grows, so does my desire to be with God and to ask for and receive God’s guidance. I’m still amazed at how each morning God’s presence returns to me, to the mind of my heart. Of course during the day I let it fly away. It disappears, but less often and for shorter lengths of time, so it seems. Give me a kind heart that will endure, One that's strong and secure. To help someone along the way, May this be my goal everyday. Let me lend a helping hand To someone whose life has not gone as planned. Reaching out to one in need, May this be my daily good deed, To provide a guiding light For someone lost in the dark of night, Let me take time to care For someone experiencing despair, Whatever I do, everywhere I go, Your will, dear Lord, let me know. Eve Kiley I’ve posted this prayer before. It’s the one my mom gave me. A prayer she prayed every day, but she didn’t just pray it, she followed it. Right up until her last breath she was smiling a people. At age 101 her kind heart just gave out. I do my best to read this prayer every morning, and to follow it. The daily repetition has given me new prayer categories. As people have different needs along the way, so there are the different ways we can help. And yet, it all pretty much the same. With a kind heart, show up, listen, pray, take action. Some lives just haven’t turned out the way people had hoped or anticipated. Let me lend a helping hand To someone whose life has not gone as planned. From time to time we all are in need. Maybe it’s just temporary, not life threatening. Reaching out to one in need, May this be my daily good deed, Some people get lost, take a wrong turn, are influenced in the wrong way. To provide a guiding light For someone lost in the dark of night, Then there is despair when all seems lost forever—a death, illness, accident, divorce, loss of job. For someone experiencing despair, Whatever I do, everywhere I go, Give me a kind heart that will endure, One that's strong and secure. To help someone along the way, May this be my goal everyday. Let me lend a helping hand To someone whose life has not gone as planned. Reaching out to one in need, May this be my daily good deed, To provide a guiding light For someone lost in the dark of night, Let me take time to care For someone experiencing despair, Whatever I do, everywhere I go, Your will, dear Lord, let me know. Eve Kiley I say this prayer every morning. It’s one my mom gave me when she was 95, six years before she died. “I try to help someone every day,’ she told me, ‘and I want you to have a copy of this prayer that I read every day.” With that, Mom marched down to the front desk where she was living, prayer in hand, and asked Delia to make a copy for me. My mom was very wise. She knew that when we repeat something, be it a poem, scripture or prayer, we begin to internalize the message and act on it. I guess that’s what she wanted from me. In this prayer we are asking God to guide us in lending a helping hand in a variety of situations: some, just minor bumps along life’s road; others, life changing, life chattering caverns. · To someone whose life has not gone as planned: this might be for those who, looking back over their life, had thought and hoped that they would have experienced more joys. · Reaching out to one in need: this might involve a small act of kindness for a small need. · For someone lost in the dark of night: this might be for someone who is not certain of the right decisions to make during a particular stretch in life. · For someone experiencing despair: this might be for someone in the midst of terrible tragedy was feeling no hope or resolution. This prayer starts by asking God to give us kind heart. Um, I thinking that that’s where prayer for others begins. This morning I woke up with overwhelming gratitude for this beautiful sunrise, for family and friends, health, life possibilities, for all the grace in my life. I try to do something every day for someone else. Up here at the cottage it is often just an email, but I can hear my mom telling tell me that is good enough for the moment. I still think of her during her last days, doing what was good enough for the moment, smiling at people as they walked by her wheelchair. |
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